The powerful impulse given to Roman tragedy by Ennius was sustained till about the beginning of the first century B.C., first by his nephew M. Pacuvius and after him by L. Accius. The popularity of the drama during this period may be estimated from the fact that, of the early writers of poetry, Lucilius alone contributed nothing to the Roman stage. The plays of the three tragedians who have just been mentioned were not only performed during the lifetime of their authors, but, as appears from many notices of them in Cicero, they held their place on the stage with much popular applause, and were read and admired as literary works till the last days of the Republic. This popularity implies either some adaptation of Roman tragedy to the time in which it was produced, or some special capacity for awakening new interests and ideas in a people hitherto unacquainted with literature. Yet, on the other hand, the want of permanence, and the want of any power of development in the Roman drama, would indicate that it was less adapted to the genius of the nation than either the epic or the satiric poetry of this era. If the dramatic art of Pacuvius and Accius had been as true an expression of the national mind as either the epic poem of Ennius or the satire of Lucilius, it might have been expected that it would have flourished in greater perfection in the eras of finer literary accomplishment. The efforts of Naevius and Ennius were crowned with the fulfilment of Virgil, and the spirit and manner of Lucilius still live in the satires of Horace and Juvenal; but Roman tragedy, notwithstanding the attempt to give it a new and higher artistic development in the Augustan age, dwindled away till it became a mere literary exercise of educated men, and remains only in the artificial and rhetorical compositions attributed to the philosopher Seneca. From the fact that early Roman tragedy left no literary heir, it is more difficult to discern its original features and character than those of the epic or satiric poetry of the period. A further difficulty arises out of the very nature of dramatic fragments. Isolated passages in a drama afford scanty grounds for judging of the conduct of the action, or the force and consistency with which the leading characters are conceived. There is, moreover, very slight direct evidence bearing on the dramatic genius of the early tragic poets. Roman critics seem to have paid little attention to, or had little perception of this kind of excellence. They quote with admiration the fervid sentiment and morality--'the rugged maxims hewn from life'--expressed on the Roman stage; but they have not preserved the memory of any great typical character, or of any dramatic plot creatively conceived or powerfully sustained.